George Smith has urged his team mates to put their ‘heart’ into the remaining 11 games of the season.

Chesterfield travel to 15th placed Cheltenham Town at the weekend and after Barnet’s draw with Port Vale in midweek, Jack Lester’s side have slipped to the bottom Sky Bet League Two table.

Smith, who signed for the Spireites on transfer deadline day from Northampton Town, despite being injured at the time, expects to be back fully fit in the next few weeks.

“I felt as though I had to ease my way back into it, that’s my first game for three months,” Smith said of his debut against Lincoln City. “So, it’s a case of getting that match fitness back again and showing the Chesterfield faithful what I can do and help the team stay up.

“When I was at Northampton Town the gaffer told me that I could leave and go and find another club, then a week later I was injured so I was sat there knowing that no clubs are going to take an injured player.

“It is a big mental test for me being a young lad as well, I’m only 21-years-old. I know in myself that it will take me one or two more games to get back physically.”

After Saturday’s defeat, Smith knows it is becoming vitally important that they pick up three points, and he insists that the players need to tell each other if they feel they’re not pulling their weight.

Smith acknowledged: “We are struggling, in a predicament being seven points off getting out of the relegation zone, we still have 11 games left to play.

“No one on Saturday could say in their heart of hearts that they had good game and that showed with the result, we’ve spoke about it and we know we need three points every week no matter who we play.

“Heads did sink, we’re in that situation now where we need to get out of that, we’ve spoke about it in length as a team, we need to be more brutal with each other. We need to hammer each other when someone does something wrong because standards need to be at 100 per cent.”

The Spireites went six league games unbeaten before Christmas and Smith knows the squad have the quality to go on a similar run.

The left-back said: “I’ve only been here for a few months now, but I’ve seen this season when it does click we can play and pick up results. Against Swindon I thought we were unbelievable, you look at that and you would have thought we were in Swindon’s position and they were in ours.

“It’s hard to forget about the table and you try and work out what is going to be best for the team and where we can pick up results and who we need to beat, we know what we need to do and that’s win games on Saturdays.”

“It doesn’t matter who we play as long as we play our game and put 100% in we need three points and it doesn’t matter how we get it – scrappy goal or we play them off the park – three points is massive for us.”